Archive for April, 2012

The Australian Retailers Association has recommended the Australian Bureau of Statistics disclose more detail on the ‘other’ retail sales category to show the speed in growth of online sales.

The ABS current splits retailing into a number of different categories, such as clothing and household goods. However it does not specifically categorise online sales with the existing groups.

“Online retailing is in the ‘other’ retailing area, so you don’t know what percentage of that ‘other’ retailing is the online,” said Australian Retailers Association executive director Russell Zimmerman.

Gerry Harvey of Harvey Norman said last month that people will not buy furniture online.

SmartCompany spoke to two entries from the Smart50 who disagree with Gerry, Milan Direct and Fidarsi Furniture. Both have revenue in the millions of dollars.

“speaking to these two companies, it’s obvious people are buying furniture online and they’re doing so because the sites go out of their way to show as much of the product as possible.

This is where high quality photography, demonstration video and interactive features are critical. Shoppers want to take away as many variables as they can. High quality photography and other features go a long way to ensuring the purchase is a successful one.”

One common critcism of buying bulky products online from consumers is that they can’t touch or feel, for instance. However if you put a lot of effort in to your product as described above you can certainly sell bulky products online.